The hardest part of making a Best-of-the-Year list is establishing the parameter of the year, so I’m just going to make this simple and do two horror lists. The first is exclusively films that had either a theatrical, DVD or VOD release in the US of A. The second will simply be the unreleased films I saw in 2010, be they via film festival, import disc or screener, that did not receive Stateside distribution.

Regular readers should know I don’t do interviews all that often. But when an opportunity to interview Breck Eisner came up, I knew it was something I should jump on. I’ll admit, though, I was a little nervous about it at first. I was afraid I’d end up hating THE CRAZIES; that it would wind up being another dismissible, un-endearing remake out of Hollywood and that meeting Eisner the morning after might be rather awkward.

Well, if you read my review of it you should know by now that was not the case. I loved it quite a bit, which certainly talking to the man behind it hell of a lot easier to do. Enjoy. (And if you haven’t seen THE CRAZIES yet, there’s no real spoilers here, but you might as well go see it first before reading because, well, just go see the movie; it deserves it.)

Nice to meet you.

You too, Peter. Thanks for the time.

No problem. I’m actually doing this interview for a site called HorrorsNotDead.com

[Laughs] Spread the word, man. Spread the word.

That was actually sort of the crux of my review, that if horror fans don’t turn out opening weekend for something this good, they’re part of the problem.

I know, I know, let’s get them there. Horror is just inherently smaller movies. You get a Shutter Island every once and a while – whether that’s really horror or not is debatable – but we don’t get the high profile movies so much, and so when they’re not high profile you don’t get the spending budgets in advertising. We’re out spent in all the other movies a hundred times, and so we’re trying to create this grassroots, online way and hopefully people come to support it.

You’re forgiven for being apprehensive about a remake of THE CRAZIES, George Romero’s classic (as in age, not quality) bit of ’70s violence and paranoia. I know I was. After all, we live in a climate where studio (not talent) driven remakes arrive at regular intervals calculated by accounting departments, where insulting remakes are a dozen a dime and where exceptional remakes are a dime a decade. You’ll not be forgiven, however, if you call yourself a horror fan and still turn your back on Breck Eisner’s exceptional remake of THE CRAZIES this weekend. I don’t care what your excuse is, either; if you have more than 2 hours time to spare in the next 72 hours and you opt not to pay deserving coin to see THE CRAZIES at your local picture house, you’re officially part of the problem.

For those who haven’t seen the original 1973 film, THE CRAZIES is about a small town held under brutal government quarantine after a plane carrying an insanity-inducing, water-born virus crashes into the county water supply. That’s it, really. Whereas the original film was a jumbled-up mishmash of an outbreak film that was as much about a few town folk as it was the govies’ inept handling of the situation, this new evolution of THE CRAZIES has abandoned the latter part wholesale. Instead, it focuses entirely on the town Sheriff (Timothy Olyphant), his wife (Radha Mitchell), his deputy (Joe Anderson) and his wife’s co-worker (Danielle Panabaker) as they try to survive the arrival of this colossal government fluster cluck.

Not only do they have to contend with a ‘contain at all costs’ military presence, but the rest of the townies pose an even more lethal threat. The virus, which carries over the original film’s codename of Trixie, has the effect of transforming the infected into hideous killers swarming with varicose veins. They’re not mindless, though. Depending on the stage and severity of incubation, the Crazies can still talk and plot, they’re just crippled by poor impulse control. That last bit makes for an exciting and fresh variant of dread we don’t see often in Hollywood horror: human in thought, zombie in action.

THE WOLFMAN – Emily Blunt says the reason for the shifting WOLFMAN release date has always been driven by special effects deadlines; not because Joe Johnston made a crappy movie. Speaking of, the flick got an R rating this week.

2010 Slamdance Lineup – The Sundance offshoot that essentially discovered PARANORMAL ACTIVITY has announced its competition slate for next year.

Paramount Goes Low-Budget – The massive studio has set up a fund to produce micro-budget films in at attempt to recapture the profit margins of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, which they released earlier this year.

DEAD AT 17 – Vanessa Hudgens wants the lead role in the adaptation of the comic series about a dead girl tasked with saving mankind, which sounds exactly like the plot of the great game PAINKILLER except with a teen.

PRIDE AND PREDATOR – Elton John is producing a movie that finds an alien crash landing and slaughtering the protagonists of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. My god.

Remakes

STEP FATHER – The same shameless group who did PROM NIGHT garner nothing harder than a PG-13 once again.

THE CRAZIES – Photoshop promo poster out for the Olyphant starring remake.

Note: was anyone else aware that South Korea has a reality show about exorcisms? And that its music is the SAW theme?

Also, what billiards game involves a blue pool table with no pockets and only three balls, the goal of which, as far as I can surmise, is to hit both balls after bouncing off at least two of the rails? I really want to know what this is called as it is on TV All. The. Time.

»Emily in The Pros and Cons of the Zombie Apocalypse
I read this post with glee and I couldn’t agree more. If you were an elite member of a para-military group or a ninja you may survive for a while. But if you are sitting in front of your computer eating cheezy...